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There are very few companies that would argue about the importance of their website engaging clients. A potential new client will often have their first introduction to your brand or service by finding your site through a search engine, having a browse from a word of mouth recommendation or following up from a business card exchange. This initial interaction has the power to make or break the future success of this new connection.

Sell the product, sell the dream.

The visual appeal of your website obviously matters; the layout, how cool your pictures are and the whole UX impacts on your successes. Once you get past the visual ‘wow’, potential and current clients will need to read about who you are, what you do, what’s new in your business and most importantly, why they should choose you as their product or service provider.

What they read will shape their response- now that is all pretty obvious really, but, it is surprising how companies are representing themselves online with out of date, ineffective or poor content.Once a business has realised this and begins to identify that a content strategy needs to be put in place the first big decision must be, ‘can we afford to bring this in house, do we use an agency or an independent freelancer?’

Here are a few pointers to help you make that choice in a completely unbiased way…

​Familiarity breeds contempt.

In-house staff may be very familiar with your brand, its tone of voice and long-term content strategy etc, however, they may only see the vision from within, they may have become stale with trying new approaches. This is where a freelancer really comes into their own. Freelancers work for several brands and agencies every year; this means they are immersed in watching all types of brands, projects and products grow and evolve. They are involved in the, ‘how can we grow?’ conversation many times per year and within a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches.

WYPIWYG

Freelance creatives have the freedom to work at a time they are most productive, you are paying for the hours they work, not paying for the gathering round the coffee machine or a lunch hour.Freelancers are self-employed, so you do not have the additional cost of work place pension contributions, sick pay, holiday pay, NI contributions or time off for the personal crisis days that may crop up every now and then. All you pay for is the time spent on your business.Even if you simply commission a one-off piece of work, you may revisit the agreement with the same freelancer further down the line as they will have got to know your brand, but as with any new staff, do give them an ‘induction’. Helping you to sell your brand should be a collaborative process, any input you give the freelancer in the early days will be rewarded with higher quality output further down the line, less edits means more for your money.

Keep it new, keep it fresh.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a re-brand and losing the reputation and identity you have worked so hard to build, it simply means, try new approaches but keep them true to your style.No one knows your brand quite like you, but sometimes it helps to be on the outside looking in- treat your freelancer’s views as you would a potential new client. What in their opinion is great about your site? what doesn’t quite work? what does? Often during the early stages of commission negotiation, a writer will have a quick look at your existing site (if you have one), often just to see what is currently there- that initial view really counts. You would be surprised, unless you are a fellow writer, at how many typos and examples of poor syntax jump out. If your writer spots them, do take up the offer of correcting them- it’s not being picky, it is a genuine desire to ensure your site looks professional and polished. This also demonstrates they know what they are doing.

Don’t miss a trick.

Freelance writers constantly get approached by companies and individuals and asked, ‘How much for an article?’ ‘How much for a webpage?’, ‘How much for a series of social media posts?’ etc, this is really missing a trick. Perhaps the best question would be, ‘I need content to build my brand, how can we approach this? Don’t be scared to outlay an hour or so of financial investment at the early stages of a possible commission- you will reap the rewards later and this will actually save you money as the foundations and induction stage previously mentioned will have begun to have been laid.

Time to delegate

During the start-up phase of many new enterprise venture, many business owners and entrepreneurs create their own content and sometimes even build their own site, this is great but as time goes on it is better to concentrate on what you do best. Value your time by concentrating on the point of your business and leave the writing to the people that choose that as their career path. SMEs can rarely afford or accommodate an in-house writer or digital marketing team, by outsourcing this element you can have qualified and experienced contractors at a fraction of the outlay you would be paying for those services on your payroll.

What is your ROI?

The ROI of any freelance copy writer commission will be greatly reliant on how much positive input you have at the ‘compiling a brief’ stage.It is a good idea to work out what the average revenue is from one new customer, then using your known metrics predict how many new (potential) clients and customers will see the new content- and how many existing ones will stay engaged. Based on this research you should be able to realistically predict how many new or unique business leads you will gain from this campaign…yes it will pay for itself in no time.

Paying for your work.

This can often be a tricky few moments for a writer. If people are concerned about the hourly or project fee rate it sounds alarm bells as the true value of the project has been missed. I’m sure I am not the only one that has lost a potential client after the, ‘yes, that all sounds amazing’ stage once the quote is submitted- So you wanted me to increase your conversion rates/ revenue/ online reach for free? You would need to pay an employee for the work they do for you on time and in full, a freelancer is no different in that respect.

Never underestimate the power good content makes to your brand reach.

Simple as that really- no further explanations needed for this point.

​One of the real benefits of freelancing for me is that I don’t get bored with writing about the same product or service day in, day out. A lot of my commissions are writing technical content. For me, the becoming immersed in a new concept or product is revitalising. Deep research leads to new knowledge and understanding; in-house staff may overlook the often taken for granted aspects of your brand; they may assume everyone knows it so there is no point mentioning it…wrong! True, any brand needs to appeal to clients and customers that know what they want and need, but don’t forget those you are yet to meet- become the ‘go-to’ authority on all things to do with your field of work.

​If you would like to find out more about the ways a freelance copywriter can help develop your web content, please do get in touch.

​Mr Darcy once said, “My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever”. This sentiment is not just to be confined to fine literature, unfortunately, this still rings true in modern society; perhaps even more so with global communication technologies being vast and instant. A bad reputation or a slur on your good name can do untold damage to an individual – but what about the damage to your brand?In recent months there have been some high profile social media faux pas, while these may provide a quick sensationalist flurry of excitement for the innocent bystander, such mistakes can make or break reputations, careers, marriages, business allegiances and ultimately your livelihood.

​Phil Neville was recently appointed the England Women’s Football Team Head Coach. Unfortunately, his new post was quickly overshadowed by the re-emergence of some historic and cringe-worthy tweets joking about domestic violence and stereotypical inaccuracies regarding gender roles. As tweets from 2012 went viral within hours of his appointment, Neville deleted his private twitter account. It is hard to escape from such gems as; “Morning men couple of hours of cricket B4 work sets me up for the day” swiftly followed by, “when I said morning men I thought the women would of [sic] been busy preparing breakfast/ getting kids ready/ making the beds- sorry morning women”. As if this wasn’t distasteful enough, Neville was further embarrassed by two other tweets being revisited to cause a stir, “U women of [sic] always wanted equality until it comes to paying the bills #hypocrites” and, “Relax I’m back chilled- just battered the wife!!! Feel better now!” This was allegedly referring to a game of table tennis, but these tweets are the last thing to promote a feeling of trust and honour with their new coach among the finest women footballers in England.

​Henry Bolton, the UKIP leader, was left in a sticky spot after his girlfriend, Jo Marney made a hideous messaging mistake when putting forward her views about Meghan Markle to a friend. Admittedly, these were disclosed by the ‘friend’ rather than via social media, but the point remains the same- if you don’t want anyone to be able to tweet about it, don’t write it down- some opinions are best not aired. I’m not promoting widespread censorship, but we all have a responsibility to not spread hatred and venom.

​Here is a little compilation of some of my favourite social media ‘moments’ of the rich or famous.

​Paris Hilton was arrested in Las Vegas in 2010 for possession of cocaine. The substance was discovered in a Chanel handbag that Hilton vehemently denied belonged to her, if only she had remembered that she tweeted a picture of herself holding the handbag that very morning, accompanied with the words, “Love my new Chanel purse I got today!” Yes Paris, you’re so busted.

You can't beat a good headline. Anthony Weiner makes the cover of the Daily News.

​2011 saw the hilariously named ‘Weinergate’. Anthony Weiner tweeted a picture of his, erm, ‘reproductive organ’ to all his twitter followers- he had intended to simply send it to a young woman in Seattle. Initially, Weiner tried to get himself out of trouble by saying his twitter account had been hacked but eventually admitted he had tweeted it in error- he had no choice but to resign.

​Charlie Sheen once tweeted his personal phone number to his entire twitter following, he was obviously inundated with calls and had to change his phone number- he claims he only intended to send it to Justin Beiber, this is one example of where I wish I knew the back story.

​2010- Mary J Blige excitedly tweeted that she was going to study at Harvard-pretty exciting stuff. Her bubble was burst when Harvard replied to her tweet by pointing out that she was only actually at the stage of having her application considered. This action caused a huge fan backlash against Harvard University, Blige hit back by tweeting, “Why is that people always try to understand estimate my intelligents? They should never do that!” No Mary, no they shouldn’t…

​It is not just celebrities and high-profile executives that make mistakes on social media, even some of the top global brands have fallen foul of appropriate social media campaigns.

Controversial Dove advert...

​​Dove (thankfully) put a premature end to one social media campaign that showed a black woman removing her brown top to transform into a white woman in a light-coloured top.The brand was condemned for the overtly racist overtones during this campaign and had to apologise for how very wrong they got this- The Nivea brand also got their fingers burned with a similar campaign on Facebook that stated, “white is purity”. ​How could Unilever and Beiersdorf Global AG get things so wrong, and how on earth did these campaigns even get off the drawing board in the first marketing meeting?​

It takes seconds to post, how long to build the respect for your brand back?

​Wendy’s fast food chain tweeted a Pepe the frog meme- innocuous at first glance, until people remembered the character had been co opted by the White Supremacist movement in the 2016 election. Wendy’s responded by taking the tweet down almost immediately, however, as viewers of the tweet had had the foresight to take a screen shot, the unwise decision to post it is preserved for eternity.

​So what is the moral of the story?

Most importantly, double check everything, no, triple check everything- ‘if in doubt, leave it out’ would be an appropriate mantra here.Ensure your security is as robust as you can manage- opt for verifying your social media accounts, use 2 factor authentications, train employees to understand the impact of anything they may post and never use a post it note in the office with your log in details on- you never know just how hilarious your work colleagues may think they are.Try to avoid politics- Unless you are an elected politician of course. Politics is a dangerous area, if you appear insensitive you will be condemned for it.If you make a mistake, the best course is to just come clean and learn from it. Try to make amends and never get complacent about public forgiveness. People have long memories and retweets and screen shots have even longer ones.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.(Alexander Pope. 1688–1744. An Essay on Criticism)

The best way to steer clear of the minefield of social media etiquette and expectations is to hire a professional to promote your brand on your behalf. By hiring a content curator and social media manager you can confidently put your trust in a professional who has the experience and industry awareness of the best way to handle your account.

​If you think your company’s social media profiles could benefit from some expert advice and management, please do get in touch with us. Let us take you forward.

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​Which is the best strategy for brand growth and outreach, and when is best to use it?

Building your brand online used to be heavily weighted towards questionable SEO link building and often quite clumsy, and paid for, curated content links.Fortunately, in more recent times, Google and Facebook algorithms have shown a preference for original, well written copy that will remain robust during the trials and tribulations of semantic search and more recently, voice search.However, this in no way means that there is only one way to do things or that only one way is right. Let's have a little explore of how each method works and the best way to make use of the strengths of each approach.

Original content was once the niche of media publishers; content creation and distribution was relatively expensive to commission and access was pretty limited to newspapers, TV stations, established media houses etc, however, the rise of accessibility and affordability to blogging platforms and the ease that anyone can now start a personal or business website opened the opportunities with to a much wider client base in the years following the ‘dot com’ crash.​Some advantages of utilising original content creation:

Improved web search visibility: From an SEO perspective Google clearly states it ranks original content higher than curated. Google will rank your site higher than a competitors' if your content performs well within semantic search criteria. Content has to be readable and relevant; gone are the days of cheap offshore, keyword stuffed, repetitive content being acceptable to build your brand.

Better brand recognition: The producers of original content enjoy wider brand recognition and an accelerated belief of their brand being a 'better value' for the consumer. Original content creation gives your brand complete control to match the writing style, tone of voice and on point, relevant, up to date information about your specific product or service.

Traffic to the content will drive visitors to your site. Good quality content will get shares from content curators using your original content as an authority on your field or product.

The possible downside of content creation:

Good quality content costs time and money to research and produce -although realistically the investment now will reap rewards later. Perception of affordability can be a problem in the short term, especially for small businesses.

Plagiarism: Someone may purely take your content and offer it as their own, or curate and publish without correct attribution and credit or may not link to the original article- that is just bad etiquette.

Curated content used to mainly consist of a link to other existing content on another site, often with a reciprocal link back to the sharing site to help build good links. In reality this was often a poor-quality attempt resulting in ‘spammy’ black hat SEO techniques. The rise of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr etc has created a funnel into which a huge amount of new content traffic is delivered to existing and newly emerging content creators and curators. These easily accessible and hugely popular sharing platforms produce millions of words, videos, images and memes every day. It is all openly available to share, like and curate.Evolution has made the curation process much more sophisticated, particularly with the assistance of content curation platforms and apps such as buffer, Hootsuite, Content Gems, Fark, et al. Others such as BuzzFeed and Diply for example, stand in the crossover between being content creators and content curators by creating ‘new content’ based on the curation and expansion of existing content across social platforms.

The most obvious advantages of content curation;

Content curation platforms ensure that relevant or interesting content is easy to find, organise and publish- all within a couple of clicks. This can even be scheduled to go live at a day and time of your choice.

Scalable; low input of time for acquiring substantial amounts of data make this source of content provision extremely cost effective. The speed of scale combined with lower or no content writing costs leads to generating more noise online for your brand.

The negative aspects of content curation;

The ‘value’ of your brand may suffer. The quality of content you share may not truly be in line with the standards you wish for your brand. It is still important that you read through the articles you plan to share to ensure it upholds your beliefs and standards. One headline may seem catchy and fresh to encourage you to engage with the article- but you could ruin the reputation of your brand within moments if you do not take time to ensure you are not sharing oppressive hatred or libellous diatribes.

Legal issues from not accrediting the original source or copyright infringement.

Poorer SEO and brand visibility due to possible duplicate content issues and curated content will rank lower for optimised keywords than original content.

Lose followers if curated content comes from a small selection of sources. People may be led to simply by pass your interface to go directly to your source-cutting out the middle man means removing you from the traffic.

​The solutions to the problems you face when deciding on the original content creation vs content curation can be easily found if you stop for a moment and create a clear plan.

Decide who you are as a brand and what message do you want to get across. Who is your target audience?

​Original crafted content, carefully commissioned will definitely drive your company forward, and if the initial outlay seems beyond your reach financially or time critically, take a moment to look forwards and think what that investment now could mean a few weeks or months down the line; new traffic directed to your website, organic traffic and less of your time spent searching for clients - good content will help them find you.Despite this content explosion, original content still offers the best value to brands through more effective SEO and stronger brand identity and visibility, it showcases you as a thought leader, demonstrates your brand thinking, your unique voice and opinions, highlights your credibility and encourages deeper relationships with your intended audience.

Using curated content as a scalable and cost effective add on to use in conjunction with your original content is a perfect strategy to benefit from the wider audiences you will attract and engage. When done well, curation can make your brand the ‘go to’ authority on products, processes or news within your industry. Sharing content that is curated also adds to the collaborative mindset of helping other businesses within your industry. Now I am in no way suggesting you signpost your potential clients and customers to your competitors, but, with a few minutes thoughtfully spent curating meaningful and relevant content about areas of your industry that are not in direct competition, you will create networks of interdependence with your marketing. When you give something to a community, the community will give back to you. Curation is cost efficient, time efficient, builds new relationships as you widen your audience and introduces your existing audience with a wider range of alternative views and information to create a more enriching interface for your target audience.

If you rely solely on one or other strategy you may miss out on the positive benefits of both, if the balance of Curated Content -vs- Created Content is maintained mindfully, the negatives of each will be reduced, securing your place as a high-ranking authority in your field.​To find out how Creative Copy Writers can help you strengthen your brand identity through content creation and curation strategies, do get in touch…